A Negro Explorer at the North Pole

by Matthew Alexander Henson

FIGHTING UP THE POLAR SEA—HELD UP BY THE "BIG LEAD"

Following the trail made by Captain Bartlett, we pushed off, every man at the upstander of his sledge to urge his team by whip and voice. It was only when we had perfect going over sheets of young ice that we were able to steal a ride on the sledges.

The trail led us over the glacial fringe for a quarter of a mile, and the going was fairly easy, but, after leaving the land ice-foot, the trail plunged into ice so rough that we had to use pickaxes to make a pathway. It took only about one mile of such going, and my sledge split.

"Number one," said I to myself, and I came to a halt. The gale was still blowing, but I started to work on the necessary repairs. I have practically built one sledge out of two broken ones, while out on the ice and in weather almost as bad as this; and I have almost daily during the journey had to repair broken sledges, sometimes under fiercer conditions; and so I will describe this one job and hereafter, when writing about repairing a sledge, let it go at that.

Cold and windy. Undo the lashings, unload the load, get out the brace and bit and bore new holes, taking plenty of time, for, in such cold, there is danger of the steel bit breaking. Then, with ungloved hands, thread the sealskin thongs through the hole. The fingers freeze. Stop work, pull the hand through the sleeve, and take your icy fingers to your heart; that is, put your hand under your armpit, and when you feel it burning you know it has thawed out. Then start to work again. By this time the party has advanced beyond you and, as orders are orders, and you have been ordered to take the lead, you have to start, catch up, and pass the column before you have reached your station.

Of course, in catching up and overtaking the party, you have the advantage of the well-marked trail they have made. Once again in the lead; and my boy, Ootah, had to up and break his sledge, and there was some more tall talking when the Commander caught up with us and left us there mending it. A little farther on, and the amiable Kudlooktoo, who was in my party at the time, busted his sledge. You would have thought that Kudlooktoo was the last person in Commander Peary's estimation, when he got through talking to him and telling him what he thought of him. The sledge was so badly broken it had to be abandoned. The load was left on the spot where the accident happened, and Kudlooktoo, much chastened and crestfallen, drove his team of dogs back to the land for a new sledge.

We did not wait for him, but kept on for about two hours longer, when we reached the Captain's first igloo, twelve miles out; a small day's traveling, but we were almost dead-beat, from having battled all day with the wind, which had blown a full-sized gale. No other but a Peary party would have attempted to travel in such weather. Our breath was frozen to our hoods of fur and our cheeks and noses frozen. Spreading our furs upon the snow, we dropped down and endeavored to sleep, but sound sleep was impossible. It was a night of Plutonian Purgatory. All through the night I would wake from the cold and beat my arms or feet to keep the circulation going, and I would hear one or both of my boys doing the same. I did not make any entries in the diary that day, and there was many a day like it after that.

It was cold and dark when we left camp number one on the morning of March 2, at half past six o'clock. Breakfast had warmed us up a bit, but the hard pemmican had torn and cut the roofs and sides of our mouths so that we did not eat a full meal, and we decided that at our next camp we would boil the pemmican in the tea and have a combination stew. I will say now that this experiment was tried, but it made such an unwholesome mess that it was never repeated.

The Captain's and Borup's trail was still evident, in spite of the low drifts of the snow, but progress was slow. We were still in the heavy rubble-ice and had to continuously hew our way with pickaxes to make a path for the sledges. While we were at work making a pathway, the dogs would curl up and lie down with their noses in their tails, and we would have to come back and start them, which was always the signal for a fight or two. We worked through the belt of rubble-ice at last, and came up with the heavy old floes and rafters of ice-blocks, larger than very large flag-stones and fully as thick as they were long and wide; the fissures between them full of the drifted snow. Even with our broad snow-shoes on, we sank knee-deep, and the dogs were in up to their breasts, the sledges up to the floors and frequently turning over, so it was a long time before we had covered seven miles, to be stopped by open water. I took no chances on this lead, although afterwards I did not hesitate at more desperate looking leads than this was. Instead of ferrying across on a block of ice, I left one of my boys to attend the dogs and sledges, and with Ootah I started to reconnoiter. We found that there were two leads, and the safest way to cross the first was to go west to a point where the young ice was strong enough to bear the weight of the sledges. We got across and had not gone very far before the other lead, in spite of a detour to the east, effectually blocked us. Starting back to the sledges, Ootah said he was "damn feel good," and in Esquimo gave me to understand that he was going back to the ship. I tried to tell him different, as we walked back; and when we reached camp we found the Commander and his party, who had just come in; and the Commander gave Ootah to distinctly understand that he was not going back just yet. Orders were given to camp, and while the igloos were being built, Marvin and MacMillan took soundings. There had been more daylight than on the day before, and the gale had subsided considerably, but it was dark when we turned in to have our evening meal and sleep.

March 3: Right after breakfast, my party immediately started, taking the trail I had found the day previous. Examining the ice, we went to the westward, until we came to the almost solid new ice, and we took a chance. The ice commenced to rafter under us, but we got across safely with our loads, and started east again, for two miles; when we found ourselves on an island of ice completely surrounded by the heavy raftered ice. Here we halted and mended sledges and in the course of an hour the whole party had caught up. The ice had begun to rafter and the shattering reports made a noise that was almost ear-splitting, but we pushed and pulled and managed to get out of the danger-zone, and kept going northwestward, in the hope of picking up the trail of the Captain and Borup, which we did after a mile of going. Close examination of the trail showed us that Borup and his party had retraced their steps and gone quite a distance west in order to cross the lead. It was on this march that we were to have met Borup and his party returning, so Marvin and his boy Kyutah were sent to look them up. The rest of the party kept on in the newly found trail and came to the igloo and cache that had been left there by Borup. The Commander went into the igloo, and we made the dogs fast and built our own igloos, made our tea and went to sleep.